Losing My Mind
by IronAmerica
Summary: Quentin Lance has a lot of problems. The biggest one is amnesia. Crossover with Dresden Files.


It's a new fic! Quentin Lance has some problems, the least being amnesia.

Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.

Losing My Mind

Quentin Lance's first memory is waking up under the name Jerry Tilden, as part of an insurance scam. He hadn't even known what was going on—why his _pretend wife_ was trying to kill him—until the police crashed through the door, training weapons on him and…whatever her name was. He'd spent several days in the hospital, undergoing an incredibly painful detox to get the drugs out of his system.

He was pretty sure that Lieutenant Murphy was doing just about everything she could to get a rise out of him over those few days, although he didn't know why. When he'd asked Kirmani, his personal police bodyguard, about it, he'd said they'd been friends. Quentin hadn't learned much more then that, no matter how many times he pestered the other man about it. After the doctors cleared him, Lieutenant Murphy had driven him to an apartment in the downtown Chicago area.

She told him it was his, kissed his cheek (she'd had to stand on tiptoes to reach it), and told him to call her if there was anything he needed. Quentin had stayed on the steps for the next half hour, trying to remember his…his _home_. Nothing seemed familiar. The lettering in the window said his name was Harry Dresden, and that he was a wizard.

- o – o -

_April, 2007_

"'Wizard', huh?" Quentin muttered under his breath, tossing the key in his hand up and down as he contemplated the name on the door. _I can't believe this. No wonder I ended up in that scam. How _stupid_ was I?_

He sighed and shoved the key into the lock. The amnesiac was pleasantly surprised when the door swung open, quiet as a whisper. Well, at least he'd been tidy… That train of thought crashed as soon as he stepped into the building. Whoever he'd been before, _tidy_ was _not_ the word to describe him. Quentin wondered how long it would take before he burned the clutter out of sheer frustration.

After an hour of trying to sift through the paperwork for anything that might jolt his memory, he gave up and began looking for a kitchen. He knew he could cook, he just…couldn't remember who taught him. There was a vague impression of a warm hand on his back, and something that smelled terrible boiling on the stove, but… Nothing more than a few impressions. His psychiatrist at the hospital had told him not to force the memories, because they (hopefully…maybe…theoretically) would return. In time. He just couldn't force them to come.

The first room he found was a lab, buried behind a false wall. He'd thought it was the kitchen at first, but there was no fridge, and no stove. There were a _lot_ of dried and well-preserved plants, though. Quentin marked the room's location in his mind and headed back into the narrow hallway. There was a skull on the desk in the main office (he had apparently worked here too) that gave him a warm glow. He couldn't remember why. Maybe he'd been in a production of Hamlet, or something. The amnesiac shrugged the feeling away again. He'd try to figure it out after he had some food.

The second room turned out to be the kitchen. The fridge, though, was a disaster. There was food, at least, but…

"I used an _icebox_?" Quentin grumbled aloud. "What kind of caveman was I?" He sighed and pulled the butter and eggs out of the fridge. An omelet was easy enough to make. At least the groceries were fresh. The kitchen looked like it had been the most used room in the building, aside from the loft-style bedroom up a set of stairs in the back of the apartment. He smiled as he began cooking. At least there was _something_ he could remember.

Quentin was about to start eating when a man materialized out of nowhere. He was pretty sure that the man hadn't been there two seconds ago. Hell, he was _absolutely_ sure that there had been no one standing in the middle of the table. It. Wasn't. Possible. He gaped at the man, who was giving him an odd look.

"Harry?" the man asked cautiously. He had a few faint traces of a British accent, which Quentin thought were fairly pleasant to listen to. He added something to his mental list of "Reasons Why I'm Glad I Don't Remember Being Harry Dresden". Hallucinations took the top spot, shoving out "disorganized packrat" by a mile. It was depressing. He wondered if he could get something to stop them on his next trip to the psychiatrist…

"Umm…I'm sorry?" Quentin offered, feeling a little awkward. "I…I keep hearing people tell me that that's my name. I…I don't remember. I'm…sorry?" he added, feeling embarrassed. Well, at least his hallucination was polite.

"I'll murder them," the hallucination muttered under his breath. Quentin winced at the man's tone.

"I…I hate to be rude, especially to my hallucination," Quentin said, trying to break some of the man's obvious tension, "but what's your name?"

"Hrothbert of Bainbridge," the man replied stiffly. "Unfortunately, you saddled me with the nickname Bob at a young age." Although Hrothbert—_Bob_, Quentin reminded himself—looked affronted, there was no mistaking the affection for the nickname.

"Nice to meet you, Bob," Quentin said politely. And, because it was the right thing to do, stuck his hand out. "I'm Quentin Lance. Well, at least until my memories come back," he added. He dropped his hand after a few seconds, when it became clear that Bob wasn't going to shake it.

"You should eat that before it gets cold," Bob said gently, before vanishing in a shower of gold sparkles. Quentin stared at the spot over the table where his hallucination had been for a few seconds, before returning to his food. At least Bob was right—he _was_ hungry.

After finishing his food, Quentin headed back out into the main room. There were a few organized stacks of papers on the desk, and the clutter was at least tidier then it had been. He was just too tired to do much of anything. The pain medication he was on (the bitch who'd drugged him had managed to cut his arm open with the butcher knife before the police had subdued her) was making him tired.

When he got upstairs, he noticed a bulky object under his pillow. Quentin lifted the pillow up, and sighed. There was a massive colt pistol on the mattress. When he checked, he discovered that it was fully loaded, and the safety was off.

"I did not have a lot of friends, did I?" he asked the empty air. He was asleep as soon as he landed on the bed, still fully clothed.

Quentin wasn't expecting the rude awakening that he got. He'd been having a strange dream that, for some reason, involved fighting someone he thought he should know. There had been dead bodies, and a murder trial, and Bob had been there. So had the man standing over him, looking quite…put out.

"Wassgoin'on?" Quentin mumbled tiredly, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Maybe he'd had a boyfriend or something… Murphy hadn't mentioned that. Maybe she hadn't known? Hell, he could always ask.

"Dresden," the man growled. Quentin wondered how good their relationship had been. Maybe he'd just been worried after the week-long absence and no news… Either way, it was worrying him.

Quentin reached under the pillow for his gun, hand sliding easily around the grip. It felt familiar, and good. It was heavy. Also good. Comforting.

"No idea who you're talking about," he replied lightly, sounding more blasé then he felt. The man growled and reached under his coat. At that point, Quentin drew first. The only shot he managed to get off sailed neatly into the intruder's shoulder. With that, he pelted for the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.

He knew, instinctively, that the door was strong enough to withstand a nuckelavee, and that it could stop rounds from a shotgun at close range. He had no idea what a nuckelavee was, but knowing that his bathroom door was proof against shotguns was comforting. The man pulled a cell phone—a loaner from Murphy—and dialed her number from memory.

"Hey Murphy. Was I dating anyone, by any chance?" Quentin asked, leaning against his bathroom door. Murphy's reply was negative. "Oh good. Because I'd hate to have to drive my boyfriend to the hospital after shooting him. ...what's he look like? Oh, he's an African-American male, a little over six feet tall. He tried to kill me. Where am I?" Quentin looked around the bathroom. "I'm in the bathroom. He's still trying to kill me."

-_I'll be there in ten minutes, Har…_Quentin_. Keep away from him for as long as possible, alright?_-

With that, Murphy hung up.

- o – o -

That had been his first formal introduction, as Quentin Lance, anyways, to the wonderful world of magic. He was extremely glad that he didn't remember it. If that was the kind of welcome he'd always got there, it probably wasn't such a bad thing that he couldn't remember.

Murphy had arrested Morgan—his not-boyfriend—on charges of assault, breaking and entering, and attempted murder. Quentin had gotten a minor slap on the wrist for unlicensed possession of a weapon. Morgan had been released two days later—it had taken that long to get a restraining order railroaded through the courts on Quentin's behalf. Murphy had pulled more strings to get one.

Quentin had begun keeping a list of what he owed Murphy for after that. The new life from her friends in the city offices was the biggest thing. He didn't know why he'd been stuck with Quentin, but she'd told him (years afterwards) that she'd been trying to get him to start snarking again. Quentin wished, at those points, that he could remember even a _fraction_ of his life as Harry Dresden, wizard and patron saint of bleeding hearts.

By the two month mark, with no hope in sight for the recovery of his lost memories, Quentin had begun looking into career options. He'd taken his ad—well, _Harry's_ ad—out of the paper. He'd closed the office down until he could retake his PI exam. The word "Wizard" had been scraped off the front door, although Quentin felt horrible about it for days afterwards.

By the year mark, Quentin had gotten fed up with being a private investigator. He was doing well with his job, but he could so rarely get past the "Why aren't you calling yourself a wizard anymore?" and "Wait, aren't you Harry Dresden?", and other phrases that got on his nerves. A midnight visit from some group called the High Council had been the last straw.

(The silver lining to that was that Morgan had ended up in jail for a good six months for violating the restraining order. The rest of the nut jobs were given a good three years in prison each. Quentin had laughed about that as he read the story to Bob when the report appeared in the paper shortly afterwards.)

Murphy and Kirmani had been sad to see him leave. Kirmani had, according to what rumors and information Quentin could scrape up, not been on good terms with him _before_. They'd become friends after Quentin had become a "real" private investigator, without the wizardly accoutrements. (Quentin never admitted that he carried the battered hockey stick with him to Kirmani after that conversation. It just felt wrong to leave the apartment without it…like tearing off a limb.)

The Starling City Police Department had been less than thrilled with their new recruit. Lieutenant Murphy had faxed his files over to them when he'd asked for a letter of recommendation so he could join the academy. Apparently they didn't want anyone joining who was a high school dropout, much less one who'd thought he was a wizard for several years. Quentin had persevered, though, and his unwavering good luck in hunting down leads that broke cases made him a valuable asset on the force. He reached the rank of detective in a quarter of the time it should have taken.

The most surprising part of his life as Quentin had been when Morgan had appeared outside his apartment in Starling City. He'd apologized for the trouble he'd caused Quentin, as obviously he and Harry were different people. Even if they _were_, they weren't. Not on the levels that apparently mattered to the sword-wielding whacko.

That had turned into an actual friendship, after several years of contact and building new ties. Quentin never told Morgan where the skull Morgan was so interested in had gone. Getting rid of Bob had never been an option anyways. (Quentin took great pleasure in teasing Morgan about that. Apparently Morgan's bosses were still combing theatre companies, looking for Bob's skull. So far, they'd had to sit through no less than 857 performances of Hamlet all around the world.)

And then Robin Hood decided to turn up in Starling City.

- o – o -

After Quentin finished listening to the chief's rant about how the force's standards had slipped over the past thirty years, he was finally able to go home. He kissed his wife of seven years, said obligatory hellos to his stepdaughter, Dinah, and headed straight for his private office.

"Bob, up and attem, lazy bones!" he called. His wife thought he consulted a friend living on the other side of the planet. Quentin had no desire to correct her. The ghost theory still didn't make much sense, and she'd have had him committed on principle.

"Yes, Harold?" Bob asked. Quentin smiled. Bob had never stopped calling him Harry, although he'd switched to the much more formal Harold. It was Quentin's middle name, so that was alright.

"What do you know about Robin Hood?"

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Feel sorry for Quentin/Harry? Drop a line and let me know.

I feel I should explain this. Quentin Lance's actor was also the main character in a show called_ The Dresden Files_, way back in 2007. There was an episode where Harry Dresden was abducted and drugged. His kidnapper forced him into being a pawn in an insurance scam. This story, and hopefully an entire 'verse, asks what would have happened if Harry had a) never recovered his missing memories, and b) his magic was, for the most part, completely locked down.


End file.
